Scared to death: How intimidation changes ecosystems

IN JANUARY 1995, grey wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park, almost 70 years after they had been exterminated by an overenthusiastic predator-control programme. Over the next two winters, 31 animals captured in Canada were released into the park, fitted with radio collars so that rangers could track their whereabouts. But not all eyes were on the wolves; John Laundre was more interested in their main prey, elk. The large deer had run amok in the wolf-free decades, causing serious damage to the park's trees. He wanted to know how they would fare now that their old nemesis was back.

By the second year, the answer was obvious. In the parts of Yellowstone that the wolves hadn't yet reached, female elk grazed peacefully while their calves gambolled around them. "It was a scene out of a Disney film," says Laundre, an ecologist at the ...

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